Disclaimer: Alex Rider belongs to Anthony Horowitz…not me…duh!

Twenty-five year old Alex Rider looked down the plane window at the dark blue ocean below. What was it that he had said? Eleven years ago on this day sitting across from, Mrs. Jones and Alan Blunt?

"I don't want to be a spy. I just want to be a normal schoolboy and play soccer."

Now, on the plane, Alex almost laughed at that memory. Had he really thought that he could stay away from those people? He had been left alone for a while by the MI6, but the experiences with MI6 had left him different. He started noticing things he wouldn't have noticed before, and if he wanted to know about something, he would go investigate it himself. The incident with Skoda had been enough to speak for itself. He had also lost all of his friends except for Tom, who remained fiercely loyal to him.

So even though he despised doing so, he continued to work for MI6. Even the usually silent and impassive Blunt had remarked that the spy work was in Alex's blood. So now, eleven years after the Stormbreaker incident, Alex Rider was on a plane headed to Los Angeles, California.

So far this mission had been exhausting. Alex and two other operatives with MI6 had been chasing a clever and evasive killer known only as Sphinx. Sphinx had sabotaged the British government, disappeared with large sums of money, and returned to kidnap the Prime Ministers two young children and hold them for ransom. Alex had been sent along with fellow operatives, twenty-eight year old Nick Driaze and twenty-six year old Angel Chu, to find the children and capture Sphinx: dead or alive. Sphinx had taken them on a wild chase full of deceit through Europe, to parts of Southern Asia, Egypt and now, finally to Los Angeles. Along the way, Sphinx had murdered one of the children as a warning when the British government had made too bold of a move in the negotiation process.

The grounds of this mission had become very tentative. One slight mistake and their cover could get blown. It would not take a lot for Sphinx to murder the remaining child.

Alex exchanged glances with Nick, who was two seats down and had started a conversation with an old couple, posing as an interested tourist. Angel was next to him, reading some Chinese novel. Angel and Alex would be posing as an American couple returning to Los Angeles after their vacation in England. The CIA had become involved and would meet them at the airport. Alex looked out the window again and wondered how this mission would go.

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Across the aisle, Sphinx looked at Alex and his colleagues, and smiled. Everything was going as planned. MI6 was sending it's agents right into the mouth of the lion…